I hate when people say there's less and less good movies nowadays, it's kind of like old farts who stopped listening to new music 20 years ago.

Having said that, I think this year is actually (and surprisingly) disappointing. It's not some long term, downward trend, I think this year was simply short on really good pictures. Yeah, Hollywood churned out a lot of formulaic crap, but you can say that about every year and still find plenty of gems, in and outside of Hollywood.

"The Best of Youth" and "Saraband" were excellent, the former an Italian epic that for my money is better than anything released this year and the latter an excellent follow-up by Ingmar Bergman to his "Scenes From A Marriage." But technically, both were released in 2003. For various reasons, they were not distributed in the U.S. until this year.

A lot of promising stuff was disappointing. Some weren't all bad but really fell short of high expectations: "Munich" (I always have reservations about Spielberg, but even misses like "A.I." have, IMHO, plenty of things to like. "Munich" just didn't do it for me.) "King Kong." "Crash." "Memoirs Of A Geisha." "North Country." "Jarhead." "Elizabethtown." "In Her Shoes" (yeah, the trailer looked crappy, but I hoped Curtis Hanson would prove me wrong.) I know some who would add "The Constant Gardener," "Brokeback Mountain," "Pride & Prejudice," and the new "Wallace & Gromit" picture, but I actually liked them (maybe not great, but still good).

I haven't seen "The Squid and the Whale" and "The New World" (is this even out?) so maybe they'll surprise me. "Kings and Queens" is supposed to be good, I'll have to find that on DVD.

"A History of Violence," "Broken Flowers" and "Corpse Bride" would probably make my top ten. I actually liked "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" quite a bit, maybe that would #10. "Capote" was pretty good, mainly due to Philip Seymour Hoffman. "Grizzly Man" and "White Diamond" were good.

What do you guys think? What did you like?

_________________"When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war." – Dwight D. Eisenhower

Actually, I may take it back - there's a couple of promising foreign films that had poor distribution. I missed them, but they're due for DVD soon. 2046, this one picture from Thailand, The World, etc.

_________________"When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war." – Dwight D. Eisenhower

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